‘Total failure of justice': all convicted of Mumbai train blasts acquitted
But 19 years on from the carnage of the attacks, which left 189 dead and more than 800 injured, justice remains elusive.
On Monday, 12 Muslim men who were convicted of planting the bombs were acquitted after the prosecution case against them was found to be based on forced confessions and unreliable evidence.
The suspects, who were accused of being Pakistani separatists, were convicted in 2015 for one of India's worst terror attacks. Five of the men were sentenced to death, while the other seven were given life imprisonment, pending an appeal.
A decade on from the conviction, judges at the Bombay High Court found the prosecution had 'utterly failed to prove their case against the accused'.
'It is hard to believe that the accused committed the crime. Hence their conviction is quashed and set aside,' Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak said.
The men were ordered to be released from jail 'if they are not required to be detained in any other case'.
During the 2006 attacks, seven bombs placed inside pressure cookers to maximise the intensity of the blasts went off within minutes of each other, causing horrific casualties. One surgeon described his hospital in the aftermath of the attacks as 'bloodier than an abattoir' in a report published on the front page of The Times the next day.
Prosecutors said the devices were assembled in Mumbai and deliberately placed in first-class coaches to target the city's wealthy Gujarati community.
They said the bombings were intended as revenge for the riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002, which left some 2,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.
Prosecutors accused the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of being behind the attacks, although a little-known outfit called Lashkar-e-Qahhar later claimed responsibility.
• Times report, 2006: 7 bombs, 10 minutes, 160 dead
On Monday the judges spoke witheringly of police failures to prove what kind of bombs were used. The explosives and arms presented as evidence appeared 'unrelated to the blasts,' they said.
Eye witnesses presented by the prosecution were also deemed unreliable, as many of them made statements to the police months or even years after the bombing. The judges observed that it was unlikely they would remember the accused after such a long period.
'The defence had raised serious questions about the test identification parade. Many witnesses remained silent for unusually long periods, some over four years, and then suddenly identified the accused. This is abnormal,' the judges noted.
Apparent confessions by the accused, they concluded, were likely to have been obtained through coercion.
One of those convicted, Kamal Ansari, died in 2021 from coronavirus while in jail. The remaining 11 have spent 19 years behind bars.
Monday's acquittal does not mean the saga is over, as the prosecution can appeal against the order to the Supreme Court in Delhi. Given that cases move very slowly through India's judicial system, and that it took a decade for the convictions to be overturned, the men are likely to remain behind bars for months if not years.
Rebecca Mammen John, a lawyer at the Supreme Court, said the investigation and prosecution did 'a disservice both to the people framed who spent years behind bars and to the families of the victims who are left without justice'.
'When you don't have a robust investigation and you have fabricated evidence, you are letting down an entire community of people who deserve better than this,' she added. 'This is a total failure of the justice delivery system.'
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